Members of the development community are asking for a way to check
their HTML+ ARIA documents for conformance and one that does can be
used to check all flavours of (x)HTML without all ARIA associated code
being flagged as non conformant. lack of conformance checking is seen
as a potential barrier to ARIA adoption by some[1]
The experimental HTML5+ARIA checker developed by Henri Sivonen does
this, but it is limited to the HTML5 doctype. It also flags issues
based on a set of rules, defined by Henri, on what constitutes
conformant HTML5+ARIA (for example role="document" is not allowed)
[2].
Can we build ARIA checking into the W3C validator so that ARIA
conformance can be checked seemlessly with HTML whatever the version?
People seem to want a form of checking provided by the W3C that will
tell them (for example) that their HTML code is valid and their ARIA
code is valid.
[1] Speeding adoption of WAI-ARIA
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2008/speeding-adoption-of-wai-aria/
[2] ARIA in HTML5 Integration: Document Conformance (Draft)
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/aria-html5-bis/
--
with regards
Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium
www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org
Web Accessibility Toolbar -
http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html